


Fraternize

by Chokopoppo



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Animated (2007)
Genre: Friendship/Love, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, platonic intimacy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-06-03 04:54:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19456780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chokopoppo/pseuds/Chokopoppo
Summary: Maybe talking about it couldn't hurt, from time to time. With a friend.Or, two mechs who can't get any recharge these days.





	Fraternize

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a warm-up to get me back into writing after a little hiatus with Welcome! Everything is Fine., and it just spiraled. Hey, why don't we ever talk about these guys? The only two adults on this team? Why can't we talk about their friendship? IN THIS ESSAY, I WILL--
> 
> Come find me on [my tumblr](http://www.chokopoppo.tumblr.com) for more content about, specifically, Ratchet. Optimus can come too.

“Ratchet?”

Optimus’ voice is tentative, searching, from the hallway. Ratchet pauses in his work, bent over his table in the medibay. He could very well keep quiet, let the kid keep hunting, but there’s only so many places their commander has to look before he finds him, and the talking-to he’ll get is far too much trouble to remain quiet and let Optimus find him himself. “In here,” he says after a beat, and focuses his attention back down onto the table.

“There you are,” Optimus says, pausing at the doorway. Even with his back turned, Ratchet can _hear_ the cringing, nervous smile in his voice, the anxious way his shoulders are hunched up around his audials. He reaches in to knock on the fully-open door. “Knock, knock,” he says, out loud. “Can I come in?”

Ratchet _harumphs_. “It’s a free planet,” he says, “do what you want.”

There’s an awkward shuffling and stomping as Optimus makes his way through the various tables and tools that Ratchet keeps in rigid, military-precise lines along his workspace. Even when his gears and servos and pistons ache and burn and screech, Ratchet takes an extra hour to run through his checklist, to deep-clean his space, to keep things orderly. It’s the only truly _orderly_ room in the base. It’s precision. It’s clean. It’s… it’s burning away the chaff and leaving only the necessities. Order is the way of the future. Order is his only way through.

(Order does not seem to matter to most of his teammates, nor does the command structure. The young bots treat it as a laughable, childish concern. One day, Ratchet is frightened their cavalier attitude will kill them.)

Optimus wriggles his way between two tables and lands at Ratchet’s side. “Hey,” he says, a little breathlessly, “I haven’t seen you all day. We were kind of worried.”

That’s a little thing Optimus does. He says _we_ instead of _I. ‘We were kind of worried’._ Ratchet isn’t sure if he implies the rest of the team into things like that because he thinks it’ll make Ratchet feel better, or if it just helps himself—or, worse yet, if he actually believes it. Ratchet doubts if the rest of the team puts any thought towards him at all when he isn’t right in front of them. Bumblebee only mentions his name out loud when he needs something, or when he’s trying to figure his way out of getting in trouble for breaking something. They certainly don’t _worry_ about him.

Optimus worries about him. Optimus worries about everyone, all the time. He’s got enough reason to. A delinquent, a brickhead, a human pet who might get stepped on at any second and a passive-aggressive ninja walk into a bar: they break everything and leave. Not to mention the busted old piece of shit holed up in the medibay, getting more obsolete by the hour and making a fuss every time something breaks. It’s like one of those stupid human TV shows Bumblebee is always watching. They’re the protagonists, Ratchet is the running joke. Poke head out of den once per episode. Say ‘my stasis-nap!’ Roll on drum. Laugh track. End of scene.

“I’ve been busy,” he says, looking up from his datapad to type something into the archaic computer he’s been forced to do most of his work on. “I’ve been trying to build sensornets. Something to pick up on decepticon energy spikes by tracking energon’s chemical signal. Planting them around the city.”

“Oh,” Optimus says, “I didn’t know we could do that.”

“We can’t,” Ratchet replies, “when I said ‘trying’, I meant _trying._ I’ve had very little progress.”

“I would have been—I mean, I’m happy to help,” Optimus says. Ratchet isn’t sure if he’s imagining it, but the kid sounds a little deflated. Tired. “I wish you’d mentioned it sooner. I could have… I mean, we _all_ could have made it a little easier on you. You know you don’t have to do this kind of thing by yourself.”

For the first time in their conversation, Ratchet shoots Optimus a look out of the corner of his eye. His optics are dim, his audial fins tilted back. He’s trying to sound soothing, supportive. He’s trying to be a good leader. He’s _trying,_ Ratchet thinks, to be a good _friend._ But every bolt on him looks loosened, like he just came out of a rattler on an empty fuel tank. 

“I didn’t want to get everyone’s hopes up,” he says, “especially since it seems like a lost cause. I’ll keep at it for tonight, and if I can’t get this monitor to work, I can ditch it without the young bots grumbling about how all their hard work was for nothing.”

“Maybe you should get some recharge,” Optimus says, “look at it with fresh optics in the morning.”

“Between the two of us, I doubt I’m the one who needs the rest.”

“What?”

“I’m telling you that you look like scrap metal warmed over, and it’s time for you to clock out,” Ratchet says, “you look a nanoklik from falling apart in my lab.”

Optimus blinks down at him, then scans the medibay pensively. “If I _were_ going to fall apart,” he says, “this _would_ be the best place to do it.”

Ratchet, who was _just_ in the middle of turning his gaze back to the readings on the computer, does a double-take. “You need a check-up?” He asks. Already, his processor is filing away information about _radio waves_ and _intermachine communication speed_ and _wireless network buoyancy_ and pulling up Optimus’ specs, looking for minor damage. “If you want to take a seat, I’ll see if I can find anything. Might be a loose gear…”

“No!” Optimus throws his servos up, face flooding with an embarrassed dark blue. “That’s not what I—I’m fine, I was just… making conversation… repartee…” his voice falls off, and he chews his lip.

Surreptitiously, Ratchet scans him for anything physical. Just typical signs of exhaustion. He’s probably going to need a tune-up tomorrow, if nothing else, but Ratchet can’t check him for viruses or internal readings without plugging in. Which is difficult to do surreptitiously.

“I’m just worried,” Optimus says, after a moment. “It’s hard to get into recharge. My processor just keeps running scenarios, the worst ones it can generate, and I just—spend all night trying to complete them, and I just. When I unplug, I’m still exhausted.”

Ratchet shutters the telescopic eye and leans back in his chair. _That_ sounds familiar. “Scenarios based on problems you’ve had before?” He asks. “In the field?”

“I don’t—know,” he says, rubbing at his fins in frustration. “Like—I don’t know. They’re stupid. I don’t want to—talk about them.”

Ratchet watches him. He stares at that sleepless mouth, the dim optics, the frustration. The embarrassment of being tormented—frightened—by his own processor, the humiliation of snapping out of charge in dumb mechanimal terror, alone, fallen out of the berth and onto the freezing cement.

He can’t see all of that in the kid’s face. He just remembers it well. The symptoms are old friends.

“I have something I use,” he says after a long moment, “it’s not exactly _legal_ on Cybertron, so I’m not _recommending_ it. But if you need something to put that away…” he trails off, trying to decide how to phrase exactly what he’s offering. Optimus is staring at him, optics blown, looking temporarily paralyzed. He doesn’t like being fixed with a look like that. “I can take a look at you and design a strain to fit your purposes,” he says. “Technically, we’re in a sovereign nation. If you _want_ it, there’s nothing illegal about you possessing it.”

Optimus makes a little choking noise as he resets his voice box. “Uh,” he says nervously, “does that—I mean, do you—“

“It _helps,”_ Ratchet reiterates, “with recharge. It can help with pain, for those of us who need that, but it’s mostly just designed to negate scenario coding. It’s not heavy. I would _not_ suggest it for recreational use.” He sighs and looks back at his work. “I use it in my personal time, not on the clock. The only thing doing damage to my processor at work is inertia. In case you were thinking about worrying about it.”

_That_ makes him laugh. Startled, slightly hysterical, but laughter in every sense of the word. Maybe a nanoklik of it. Ratchet, who likes to pretend that he doesn’t worry about the ever-growing lines on their young leader’s face, feels a little warmth blooming back into his voice box. “I didn’t _think,”_ Optimus starts, covers his mouth with a servo, “I mean, you said—and I just thought for a _klik,_ I swear, I wasn’t, like, ‘what?’ Because you’re—I mean—“

“Painfully unfun?” Ratchet supplies. Optimus splurts with laughter again.

“No! No, you’re not—I mean—“

“—Not the kind of mech you get medical dross from?” Ratchet smiles, gives a little snort of laughter, if only to encourage Optimus along. “When I started taking it, it didn’t really have the reputation it has now.”

“When you _started?”_

“Sure. Right after the war, the population that survived had… problems,” he says, and gives another little chuckle. “The government didn’t want to address it—disillusionment looked bad on TV, and Cybertron was really starting to care about its image. Discussion was suppressed. It was mostly medics, trying to figure out the coding so we could keep functioning in the workplace when random scenarios started running while we were at work. The processor rewrites protocols under stress. Puts the user interface on high alert and deletes whole systems to make room for random runs, multiplying code like a virus. When we figured out we couldn’t factory-reset without doing damage to the memory core, we went from trying to fix the problem to trying to survive it.”

When he looks up, Optimus isn’t smiling anymore. Ah. A little too much information. He forgets, sometimes, not to take that kind of thing for granted around the younger bots. Nothing like telling them what he works through to remind them how busted his engine really is. Awkwardly, he looks away.

“So what _did_ you do? In the daytime?” Optimus asks. “If you can only stop it at night. Did you… talk to someone? Work through it?”

“There _wasn’t_ anybody to talk to, back then,” Ratchet says, “not for this kind of thing. Rungian theory on Internal Reprogramming didn’t even exist yet. I just figured, it only bothers me when I’m trapped with the familiar. So I got work as far from home as I could. Space bridge repair was as good as anything else off-planet, and I had my own ship, so I was guaranteed _some_ form of team in the command structure.” He sighs and leans back. “And now we’re fighting for our lives against the decepticons anyway. Just my luck.”

Optimus laughs, and Ratchet feels a little surge of relief. At the very least, he hasn’t _totally_ othered himself. “I know you don’t like talking about that stuff,” Optimus says, “but if you ever did, I’m… I’m never that far away.”

“Thanks, kid, but it’s my business and I don’t need anyone else in it,” he says, instead of _‘you don’t need more on your shoulders’,_ which is what he means. “My offer stands, if you want to take some time to think about it. There’s no shame in coping. But either way, you should get some rest.”

“Can I stay here?” He asks, then crosses his arms over his chest nervously. “I mean. I can’t really… I don’t think I could recharge in my room, tonight.”

Ratchet peers up at him. He’s running numbers in his head, like the routine shifts and the day of the week, and he’s coming up with Optimus’ personal time. He’s not on the clock. He came to see Ratchet. For advice. In the middle of the night.

Something woke him up.

“Sure, I’ve got more berths in here than I know what to do with,” he replies lazily, as though Optimus asking to recharge in the hospital is the most normal request in the world, “take your pick. Just don’t expect me to turn off the monitor. I’m trying to get some things done.”

Optimus looks up at the monitor. “Maybe I’ll sit up with you a bit,” he says, as though the thought is only now occurring to him, “until you can’t stand me being here. Maybe I can help!”

“Thanks, I don’t think so.”

“Maybe I can cheer you on!” Optimus insists, not looking even slightly swayed, and invites himself into the space on Ratchet’s bench to his left. “Or even convince you to take your personal time. Like a break.”

“Ah, the truth comes out,” Ratchet replies, brushing against Optimus’ now too-close form as he reaches forward for the keyboard. “Well, don’t get too hopeful, I don’t mind the company. Just let me run the numbers in relative quiet.”

Well, _now_ it’s impossible to work. Of course.

Ratchet is a little too aware of the closeness between them, a little _too_ aware of all the little places Optimus is leaning against him. Which is on purpose, of course. If Optimus intends to annoy him into taking a break, there are few ways faster to make him crack than a little well-placed pressure.

He taps at some keys awkwardly, pulls up the specs for the marker just off from Woodward Avenue, and checks for a signal. Nothing. Maybe if he changes the—frequency, or something, he might be able to get a read…

“Do you think I’m a good leader?” Optimus says suddenly, like he’s forcing the sentence onto the table before he can chicken out of saying it. “I mean, do you think they respect me? Am I taking them down the wrong path?”

Ratchet doesn’t betray himself by looking sideways at him. He knows if he looks now—if he looks now, Optimus will have fixed him with that open, fervent look, the one that makes him look soft and helpless and—and desperate for approval, for _anyone’s_ approval. The one that makes Ratchet feel like a failure, not because he takes orders from someone so young but because he can never think of the right advice to give.

“I think you’re a good mech,” Ratchet says instead, tapping a key on the keyboard, “and I think it’s hard for a good mech to be a great leader. They don’t just respect you—they love you. They admire you—they trust you. That means they expect allowances from you that you might not be prepared to make. You have to decide if that’s how you want to lead your team. I can’t tell you whether or not it’s right.”

“And you?” Optimus leans against him, a tiny, gentle pressure against his arm. “Be honest. Do you respect me?”

Ratchet makes a mistake: he looks.

“I worry about you,” he admits. “This job is bigger than any of us, and it shouldn’t have been your first assignment. I don’t want to see it kill you.”

Optimus’ face falls. Angry and ashamed, Ratchet turns his gaze back to the computer. “Don’t take it personally,” he amends, “I don’t think I respect anyone anymore.”

There’s a heavy quiet for a moment. “Do you _trust_ me?” Optimus asks, the glow of his optics catching on the curved metal of Ratchet’s arm.

“Yes,” Ratchet says, because he does. And he looks, because he has to.

It’s absurd, in the abstract, how much Optimus weighs on him. It’s absurd that he trusts a kid with no field experience, who worries about this alien planet they’re all trapped on. It’s absurd that he’s the one Ratchet can talk to, _will_ talk to, will _follow._ But it’s true, and if Optimus doesn’t know that, it’s Ratchet’s fault.

“Thank you,” Optimus says, and after a moment, looks down at his knees, focusing on the ground. “I only think, sometimes, maybe you shouldn’t.”

“Your track record isn’t as bad as you think,” Ratchet says, and puts a servo on their leader’s shoulder. “When you’re evaluating yourself, all you see is the negatives. Situations you couldn’t get out of, things you couldn’t save. That _doesn’t_ mean that’s all there is.”

Optimus doesn’t look up. “Thank you,” he says again, quietly. And then, to Ratchet’s surprise, “I can always ask you what to do.”

He feels a sudden flush of pleasure, awkward and cringing in his chassis somewhere. “Oh, well,” he mumbles inadequately, clicking at something on the computer to avoid making contact, “if you think my advice is worth asking for.”

“It _is_ good advice,” Optimus insists, “I don’t always get pep talks, but when I do, I like having to avoid buying dross in the middle of it.”

“I wasn’t going to _sell_ it to you,” Ratchet says, as Optimus starts laughing, “I was going to _prescribe_ it. Talk about ungrateful.”

“ _Noo,_ I’m, _so_ grateful,” Optimus says, “the gratefulest. Um, I love… drugs… and I enjoy getting them.”

“You sound like an undercover cop on a sting operation to find the weakest strain of all time,” Ratchet says. “Go on, go get some recharge. Get out of here.”

“I’ll be quiet, I promise,” he says, holding up his servos in mock-surrender. “Really. I mean it this time.”

Ratchet _harrumphs_ and turns back to his work.

Despite his misgivings, Optimus is true to his word. He sits, watching the computer or the scanners or any of the medical equipment in its offline state, perfectly content to remain quiet. If Ratchet were a little more self-assured, he might even think it was because Optimus wanted the company.

It must be lonely at the top, he thinks. No one to talk to except other cadets, on the occasional visit from high command. The only mech he knows who’s actually in Optimus’ _social_ class is Sentinel, and he’s hardly a quality conversationalist. The team—of course, the young bots would follow their Prime anywhere—but looking at it with a military eye, it would be beyond unprofessional for him to fraternize with them. Maybe that’s why he’s worried about respect—maybe he’s worried he’s not getting it from Bumblebee anymore, and wherever Bumblebee goes, Bulkhead isn’t far behind.

Or maybe it’s just the same myriad problems that have plagued them since day one. No unit cohesion from a group of delinquent rookies without a proper understanding of hierarchy. There’s a reason they don’t like Ratchet’s orderly rows of medical equipment, his _“yes sir”s_ and salutes. There’s a reason he sticks to order so tightly—it’s nice to know with absolute certainty that he’s settled to the bottom of the team like sediment, out of the way, handling the dead and the dying away from prying eyes. Structure reassures him of everything he thinks about himself. It plants him, comfortably, in last place.

The pressure on his shoulder from Optimus’ form, at first barely noticeable, begins to grow, doubling or quadrupling in a slow ease of intensity. “Kid,” he says sternly, turning his head to get a better look, “I think you’re taking the whole ‘lean on me’ thing a little… too…”

He breaks off. Leaning against him, helm collapsed down onto his shoulder, is their leader, fully unconscious.

Well.

Well, that’s. Well. Hm.

Ratchet doesn’t know exactly what he’s supposed to… do. Here. Obviously, he can’t _let_ Optimus recharge on his shoulder. Beyond the immediate problems concerning his own back and chassis strength and the hell a pressure like Optimus’ significant weight is going to raise, there’s matters of impropriety to be considered. He can’t—their leader can’t be seen _fraternizing_ with his team like this. It’s—it’s _fraternizing._ It isn’t _correct._ Ratchet’s been around too long to worry or care about what it might do to his _own_ reputation, especially not since he’s pretty sure he’s going to offline on this miserable ball of dirt and organic life at the end of his long and illustrious career of getting blown up. But Optimus has a _career._ If he can make it out of this mission alive, he’ll have one hell of a future in front of him. He can’t be seen showing _vulnerability_ with his—his _subordinates._

On the other servo, what’s Ratchet _supposed_ to do about it? Wake him up? The kid’s been running wild on practically zero charge for days now. As a medical professional, he can’t interrupt much-needed recharge to remind his captain of _‘his place’._ Besides, his numbers look normal. No elevated sparkpulse, no flutterings. And his face is so _peaceful,_ so much younger than Ratchet has ever seen him.

They don’t talk about it—they don’t talk about much at all—but Ratchet knows there was some unspoken hurt following him like a shadow when they’d first met. A specter of something on his shoulders, before he’d had anything here to trouble his mind. Optimus is a worrier. He shouldn’t _have_ to worry about things _now._

Carefully, Ratchet sets down his datapad and pushes his keyboard back. Optimus is big, but he’s a medibot. If he recalibrates, he should be able to… move him… 

With a surge of redirected energy, Ratchet manages to get an arm around Optimus’ waist and hoist him over one shoulder, shuffle sideways, and set him as gracefully as he can on a berth slab. To his credit, he doesn’t _throw_ him. And, more to the point, Optimus doesn’t wake up.

Unfortunately, he _has_ gotten a hold of Ratchet’s chassis, somehow, and is gripping it intensely. Ratchet glares down at it, unimpressed. He tugs at the fingers, tries to uncurl them from his armor. No luck. 

“This is why I don’t make conversation in my personal time,” he mutters. 

Optimus doesn’t twitch.

“If this is some kind of ploy to get me to take a break,” Ratchet tries, staring hard down at their captain. No movement.

He pulls away from the servo on him, as far as it takes to grab a monitor. If nothing else, he can save Optimus some face; make it look like he’s supposed to be here, in case Prowl sneaks by for his routine check-up. He considers hooking something up to the kid’s processor, figure out what kind of code strain he’s producing, just in case—he _would_ have the authority to do that, as CMO, if he thought it was necessary—but discards the idea after a moment. If he gets consent, he’ll take a look. Otherwise, Optimus doesn’t need that kind of stress on him.

For now, he just needs some charge. And, maybe, someone to sit up with him.


End file.
